


A Rare and Secret Place

by Silex



Category: Original Work
Genre: Chimpanzees, M/M, Nonhuman Primates, POV Nonhuman, Sentient Animals, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-23 02:17:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17674523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: After many years peace has finally come to the valley. The chimpanzees living there have settled happily into their new, calmer lives, though some nervousness remains. Then a stranger arrives and Kemm, the former War King of the valley, is called on to investigate, having no idea of what awaits him upon meeting the strange and rather horrifying visitor. For as horrifying as the stranger is to look at, he's clearly intelligent and Kemm is determined to learn more about him. Is he a threat or something else entirely?





	A Rare and Secret Place

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sweetcarolanne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetcarolanne/gifts).



> You always have such lovely requests. I hope I've done this one justice.

When the stranger had first appeared in the valley an emergency gathering of advisors had been called. War King Kemm had been of the opinion that if it hadn’t happened so soon after the conflict ended that no one would have worried. A single stranger, coming from outside the valley would hardly be a threat. It wouldn’t be the first time something had come from outside, the ponderous, slow moving giants frequently wandered in, occasionally tearing down a few young trees before they were driven off, but that was hardly a cause for concern.

The messengers claimed that this stranger was different, smaller and faster moving than the giants and even more hideous. Kemm had laughed then and offered to take a few of his warriors with him to investigate.

Seeing the stranger for the first time had silenced all laughter. They weren’t a giant, far from it, they seemed weak and stunted, like a tree grown in the shade. Something was wrong with their arms, forcing them to walk on two legs, yet for their hideous deformity they moved with surprising speed, only occasionally stumbling over roots or grabbing onto branches to support themselves. Two of his warriors fled outright going up into the trees, the others recoiled and kept back. Kemm had stood his ground, trying to be fearless as the stranger approached.

They stopped a distance way and made strange sounds, horrible soft, slurring noises.

Kemm listened to the noises, but also observed. As a War King he had been taught to look for things that others would miss, weaknesses that would be invisible to all others. The stranger, horrible as it was to look at, near hairless dirt colored skin mostly hidden by strange wrappings, limbs all wrong and white-rimmed, crazed eyes, wasn’t a danger. In fact, they came across as lost and afraid, going so far as to recoil when Kemm ordered his warriors back to him.

He had them hold back while he approached the stranger. Communicating with them proved impossible, their languages too different, but Kemm was fairly certain, through gestures and expressions, though even those were strange, that the stranger had been lost for three days before they found the valley, possibly longer.

It was a time of peace and there were rules of hospitality to be observed in such times, for as strange as the man was, he was clearly intelligent, far more so than one of the giants. Kemm managed to express to the stranger that they would not harm him, and then guided him, for the first time, back to his home.

It was a trip that would be repeated many times, something that would not have changed Kemm’s decision if he had known.

Peace King Halu had been fascinated by the stranger, tried to ask him questions, for it was his nature to be outgoing, to want to know and talk. That was the role that Halu had been raised for and the stranger was, to him, a tribe of one that needed to be included in the peace he maintained. Of course the stranger understood none of this, and ate and drank in nervous silence. He seemed particularly impressed that the meat they offered him was cooked over an open fire, lit for the occasion. Halu, for all his many virtues enjoyed showing off for guests and Kemm was surprised that he hadn’t ordered fish brought up from the river for the meal.

Kemm stood guard, for that was his duty, having brought the stranger so far into the valley. The man was his responsibility and beyond that, fascinating to watch.

When the stranger had rested and recovered Kemm escorted him to the edge of the valley, along paths that were invisible unless you knew them and up steep cliff sides so that he could leave.

Orienting himself by the position of the sun the stranger nodded and held out his hand as though there was something he wanted.

At the time Kemm didn’t understand so he watched the stranger leave and then returned to discuss matters with Halu.

The stranger was not unique, that they agreed on, for he had language and customs, strange as they might have been, but there was no mention of any creatures like him in any stories that either of them knew. Halu even called in several of his most trusted wives, hoping that their different perspectives on matters would give them insight, for the stories that men and women passed down were different. Halu’s wives talked quietly between themselves, debating which details of their sacred stories they might tell men.

In the end they agreed that as Peace King there were things that they could tell Halu, but Kemm had to leave.

Later that evening Halu sought Kemm out in the group of five trees that were his by right as a War King. The stranger was his responsibility, Halu informed him, and that if necessary he should be ready to resume his role. The women had stories, though they could not share them and as such Kemm would be appointed a woman as an advisor.

Days passed and the stranger remained gone, no danger came and peace continued. The advisor that he had been granted, a young woman named Liri, put forth a very convincing argument that the stranger had vanished back to the place that all strange things came from and Kemm accepted the explanation as wisdom coming from the stories of her mother, just as Kemm looked to the stories of his father and uncles. At the same time she said that she wanted an audience with Halu’s wives. Kemm saw to it that her request was granted and noted that, even though it was a time of peace, the women of rank gathered stones for slings to keep near their home trees.

The need for the stones or for Kemm to act in his rank of War King never came.

He had been ready to forget about the stranger, when the unexpected happened. The stranger returned.

Again Kemm went to investigate, this time accompanied by Liri, for if she was to serve as his advisor properly she needed to see for herself. She carried with her a sling of braided plant fibers and carefully prepared hide, but no stones. He understood the meaning of the gesture, though he explained that it would be lost on the stranger, that Liri was a protector of home and family.

To her credit, despite never having trained as a warrior, Liri was unafraid of the stranger, the same man that had come previously. She laughed at the horror, calling him a man of sticks and leaves, then apologized even though the stranger laughed back. Kemm thought that she was right, with how tall the stranger stood, his limbs shaped so that was the only way he could stand, and covered with strange wrappings, he did look like he was made of sticks held together with strangely colored leaves.

This time the stranger wasn’t lost or afraid, bringing his own food and water with him, as well as many other strange things that neither Kemm nor Liri could recognize.

He followed them, taking out a strange, flat rock from the bundle of wrappings he carried on his back.

Liri was the one who pointed out to Kemm that it wasn’t a rock, that it was a collection of leaves wrapped in stiffly worked hide. The stranger scratched at the leaves with a stick and when Kemm moved closer to see what he was doing, the stranger turned the bundle of white leaves to show him. The stranger had used the sticks to mark lines on the page, similar to the way children would take bits of burnt wood to make pictures on rocks and trees.

These lines weren’t depictions of animals, faces or scenes from stories though, they seemed like random scrawlings, until the stranger pointed to several of them. Then the image began to take shape. It was an image of trails, the immediate outside of the valley imagined from above. Kemm recognized the entrance, as well as several trails that the giants frequently traveled down. There was the side of the mountain, and past that a great, thick line that must have been the river that Kemm had traveled to once when he was younger, before he was War King. Then he had been leading a scouting party, looking for a safe place for his men to bring their families if the fighting got too bad.

One of the paths forked wrong, there were three branches, not the two drawn, and he pointed to it, tracing where the missing path should have been. The stranger didn’t understand of course, but he made a little mark on the leaf at the spot Kemm had pointed to.

This time Kemm brought the stranger to his favorite tree and had a messenger send word to Halu that the stranger would be his guest.

Not prone to the extravagances of the Peace King, Kemm offered him fruit and a wooden platter of fat ant larvae. The stranger ate the fruit, but in an exaggerated show of what must have been gratitude, refused the larvae.

Liri made several attempts to talk to the stranger, finally getting him to mimic a greeting, which was all she was able to manage to get from him. Her attempts as teaching him her name all ended hilariously and her attempts at every other bit of etiquette she could think of failed in equal measure.

Which wasn’t to say that the stranger didn’t appreciate the hospitality. When Liri sat still to watch him he used the sticks he carried to create a near perfect likeness of her on one of his white leaves. It was amazing, the way he’d managed to show the blotches of lighter color around her mouth, the dark circles around her wideset, brown eyes and the way the fur on the one side of her head never quite lay flat.

That night while the stranger slept Liri spoke with Kemm, giving her opinions on the stranger.

She felt that he was very young, which was why his skin was such a strange color, that in time it would grow darker and patterned. Kemm countered that the stranger was clearly older, he moved with the confidence that came with age and lacked the bravado of youth, besides he was quiet when he made noises and young men were prone to being loud. Liri agreed that this was possible and proposed another idea, that the stranger was quiet and reserved not because he was mature, but because the tribe he came from were more different than any of the tribes of the valley, that his were a peaceful people who didn’t have any concept of conflict.

Kemm laughed softly at the idea, the giants were simple and didn’t make war either, but they were capable of being very loud when they wanted to.

Liri laughed back at him, pointing out that the stranger was too frail to fight without weapons and that he carried neither a club nor a sling. Kemm found her suggestion that the stranger, clearly a man, would carry a woman’s weapon, odd but then again, he did wrap himself in leaves, much like a woman would at one of their ceremonies, though the leaves were like nothing either Kemm nor Liri had seen.

The next morning Kemm brought the stranger back out of the valley, though not before the stranger gave Liri one of his wrappings, one as blue as any flower, but far larger, and lacking veins like a leaf. Curiously, the wrapping neither wilted nor faded in time, becoming the central part of a theory Liri developed about the stranger – that he came from a place with no war, one ruled by a Queen, which was the reason he had given the strange leaf to her and explained his strange wrappings and quiet, reserved nature, as well as how clumsy he was. In her mind it would take a Queen to watch over such a fragile and shy people. Besides, Liri added, how could such a people even make war? Their women could use slings to defend their homes from predators, but their men were clearly too frail to fight each other.

It was something that she was so insistent about that Kemm didn’t even try to argue and instead had her come with him when he went to Halu to discuss matters. She would explain her beliefs to the Peace King’s wives and see if they agreed.

They did, strongly enough that they wanted to meet the stranger if he returned. The idea of a child-like race, ruled by a Queen was fascinating to them.

The stranger did return and the King’s wives all adorned themselves with leaves and flowers twined together with strings of braided fiber, carrying with them ornately woven slings, too intricate to be used. Much like Halu, they were prone to showing off, but that was their right. After all, they needed to represent the families they came from as well as the Peace Kind, which was a great responsibility.

Their response to the sight of the stranger ranged from horror to pity. It all turned to delight when the stranger took time to make images of them in his bundle of leaves, carefully replicating the intricacies of the patterns of color and wrinkles on their faces, as well as the unique weave of each of their slings and the flowers and laves they wore.

It did support Liri’s idea, that there was a Queen and the stranger would bring the images back to her so that she would see the women in the valley in all their splendor and understand that these women were her equals.

The stranger’s attempt at mimicking a proper greeting caused them no end of delight and they had him repeat it until he got it almost right. This time Liri, with the help of Halu’s wives, managed to get him to learn their names and tell them what must have been his name, a mushy, soft sound, more like a bark ending in a cough than a real name, but it matched the rest of the sounds he made. They all agreed that it was an unpleasant sound and seemed pleased when he accepted their calling him ‘stranger’ as though it was his name. A poor way to call him, but far less unpleasant to say.

When the stranger turned to him and repeated the greeting and introduction that he had been taught, Kemm stood up as tall as he could and replied with careful enunciation so that the stranger would understand.

At which point they really weren’t a stranger anymore, even if neither he nor Kemm could get the inflection of the other’s name right.

Introductions finally out of the way, further attempts at communication could be made. Careful back and forth repetition until one understood, or at least seemed to.

The time came for the stranger to leave and Kemm guided him out of the valley, as was his duty and when he again returned Kemm went to escort him back in.

There was no pattern to the strange man’s arrival and departure, which suited Kemm fine. It was not as though he had anything more interesting to attend to on most days.

When the conflict finally ended and peace resumed in the valley stepping aside to let Peace King Halu oversee the fragile truce had been a relief. Having been War King for so many years Kemm had tried to enjoy his retirement, but unlike his generals, he had a hard time settling into the role of a passive advisor. It wasn’t that he craved conflict, it was that he missed the uncertainty, the wondering. The stranger was an enjoyable diversion from his duties as an advisor and mentor to Halu’s sons.

And the questions the stranger asked as he learned to ask them were always amusing, things that no young man in the valley would ever think to ask, which in turn made Kemm think in new ways.

Discovering that the stranger had assumed that Liri was Kemm’s wife had amused the War King greatly, though Liri found it far less humorous and had tried to explain that while a wife could serve as an advisor not all advisors were wives and that she certainly wasn’t Kemm’s wife. She used Halu’s wives as examples, some of them serving as advisors to the Peace King, some of them serving as advisors to their fellow wives.

The stranger’s next few questions seemed to support Liri’s belief that his people were ruled by a Queen, for the man’s language had distinct terms for the sons and daughters of royal parents and it was very much the realm of women to keep track of such elaborate family ties. Part of what made Halu such a good Peace King were his many wives from many different families. Their speaking on his behalf allowed him to maintain strong connections throughout the valley and that seemed to be reflected in the stranger’s description of how royal families worked.

After talking about his people’s ways of keeping track of important families the stranger asked a question that Kemm couldn’t make any sense of – something about if high ranking men had many wives, what it meant for the men who weren’t of rank.

Neither Kemm, Liri, nor any of Halu’s wives who had been present for that question understood what it was that was being asked. It wasn’t unheard of that a woman would find a man of low rank to be particularly clever, handsome, or otherwise endearing and agree to be his wife.

Eventually the direction of the question became clear, with the stranger asking Kemm if he had a wife of his own.

He smiled bitterly at that, not because he had ever wanted a wife, but because the burden of being a War King was not one that could be shared with a woman, it would be unfair to her if he had died during the conflict, or survived after a loss. Rarely were War Kings killed when theirs was not the side that dictated the terms of peace. Their being allowed to live was a symbolic mercy, but the loss of status that came with such an occurrence would be unfair to inflict on a wife.

That had been the end of that topic of marriage and relationships, or so Kemm had thought, until on a later visit the stranger commented on how the women, Halu’s wives and Liri, were always close to each other, yet Kemm stood apart. Was he lonely, the stranger wanted to know, or did he have friends that hadn’t been introduced?

Kemm had to think that over. There were plenty of young men who admired him, and he remained close with several of his generals, but their duties with Halu kept them busy most of the time. In peace he had drifted away from most of those he had known. Halu had been his friend when they had been young, but the conflict and following peace had made things complicated. It was difficult for a former War King, even one of the side that had won, to maintain ties with too many people. Bad blood, unpleasant memories and the general concern of what might be implied by anyone associating too closely with him made it right for him to distance himself from others. He had his home, and enough former brothers-in-arms, as well as young men who came to him with questions that he had no shortage of company, but friendship?

That was another matter entirely. It was part of what was needed to nurture peace within the valley and if it meant that he spent most of his nights alone, without the company of another man, so be it.

For all his questions the stranger was elusive when Kemm asked ones of his own, prompting Kemm to ask what he was afraid of, if his people were really so peaceful that they were afraid of the inhabitants of the valley.

The stranger’s expression grew distant.

It was enough of an answer for Kemm. There wasn’t simply peace outside of the valley where the stranger came from. Like all things it was far more complicated.

The stranger came and went, sometimes returning in days, sometimes gone for a season or more.

During the long stretches of time Kemm missed him, the questions and explanations, watching him make pictures on his bundles of leaves and little sticks, the small gifts he brought of strange foods and brightly colored leaves and flowers that never faded, shining stones for the women’s slings and other things the likes of which Kemm had never seen. They were given without reserve, in exchange for the hospitality he was given, as though the hospitality wasn’t its own gift, his arrival a joy as bright as any flower.

When the stranger returned from one of his long absences Kemm would rush to him, reach up to put an arm over his shoulder and press faces in greeting, then clasp hands in the stranger’s manner of greeting.

And when Halu’s wives and Liri had other, more important matters to attend to, leaving the two of them alone they talked of matters not important to women. That way the stranger didn’t need to feel embarrassed by his drab, patternless skin and how sparse this fur was everywhere save the top of his head and around his mouth. His fingers, nimble as they were with sticks and leaves, were too thick and clumsy, but Kemm was a patient teacher, showing him how to part fur so that he could tell stories of the scars it hid, friends and battles, and things not fit for the ears of women.

The stranger would listen, sharing stories of his own, even if he seemed fearful to touch Kemm, hesitant, as though making peace after a quarrel or seeking comfort. During those conversations Kemm learned, as he had expected, that the place the stranger came from was not one of simple peace. There were complexities that the two of them lacked the shared words to explain, though with each visit their grasp of the other’s language grew stronger.

The world outside of the valley was large, filled with many tribes and with all the conflicts that it entailed, ones far more elaborate than anything any War King of the valley had seen. The stranger had been embarrassed by this, as though Kemm couldn’t understand fighting or conflict on a large scale. He spoke to Kemm about how he cherished his time in the valley, spending time with such a peaceful people, failing to realize how new the peace was.

He seemed shocked when Kemm explained what his role as War King had meant, what he had needed to do, but when he understood he smiled and then laughed when Kemm explained that Liri believed that his people were peaceful and were ruled by a Queen.

It turned out that Liri had been at least partially right, there were Queens, but also Kings and many other types of rulers that Kemm had never imagined and the stranger couldn’t properly explain.

Learning that life in the valley wasn’t one of perpetual peace, as though he’d somehow missed the slings that the women carried, showing that they were ready to protect themselves and homes from threats that might come at any time, the stranger grew more relaxed and more willing to talk about the place he came from.

There was plenty of bad, a relief to Kemm, for it was reassuring to know that his people were not unique in their conflicts and hardships, that people inside and outside of the valley were fundamentally the same. It was impossible to make it official, but in a way the stranger served as an advisor to him, giving him an outsider’s perspective and explanation of things.

If the stranger had shown any desire to stay Kemm would have taken him as an advisor and had even considered bringing the matter up with Halu, but at the same time he was hesitant. He wanted the stranger to be regarded as harmless, a mere curiosity, gentle and utterly safe despite how he looked. It was foolish perhaps, to want to protect the man in such a manner since he could clearly take care of himself, but at the same time Kemm couldn’t help feeling the need to do so. He was so awkward, came across as clumsy and barely able to take care of himself, no matter how many times he reassured Kemm that he could.

Perhaps his lack of other friends was why he valued the company of the stranger so highly, but it was more than that. Coming from outside the man had no preconceptions, no biases, and as ugly as he was, he was kind, not just with his gifts, but with his words and the way he listened. He tried so hard to treat everyone he met well and never seemed bothered when others laughed at him or looked away, whispering about him, saying things that they thought he couldn’t understand. He was curious and genuine and marveled at even the simplest things, strange given the wonders he brought with him each visit. Being with him, teaching him about life in the valley, let Kemm see the world in new ways. Explaining why it was a woman’s duty to defend her family and her home. Taking him to a coming of age celebration, watching as a boy entered manhood and explaining the meanings of each part to the stranger Kemm reminisced about the events of his own coming of age ceremony. The club he had fashioned from a dead branch had been too old, too dry and had shattered when he hit it against the ground, a bit of wood cutting his forehead and leaving him bleeding as he finished the ritual with the broken stick.

The stranger listened amused and impressed in turn and traced his fingers along the faint scar, nearly lost amid the wrinkles of Kemm’s brow and the War King had reciprocated as was only natural, running his own fingers along the little lines of bristly hairs above the stranger’s eyes. It was funny how those lines made his face, otherwise so smooth and blank, almost as expressive as any other man’s face would be. The way they rose when he was surprised, drew together when he was thoughtful or confused, and the way they lay just so when he relaxed was something Kemm loved to watch. From those lines of hair alone Kemm would have believed that the stranger’s people were peaceful, a way to read a face without rudely locking eyes, an innate way to avoid conflict.

The stranger relished the contact, yet was hesitant to reciprocate, his sparse hair making proper grooming impossible. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy the contact, for he would put an arm over Kemm’s shoulder, or lean against him when they sat together, but it seemed that such a basic gesture of friendship and affection as grooming, was difficult for him.

At first Kemm had assumed that it was because the stranger had so little fur of his own that grooming was strange to him, but when Kemm had tried to teach him, when Liri and Halu’s wives were away so that he wouldn’t be embarrassed by his first attempts, the stranger had still hesitated. He had tried to explain, something about how it was rude, which made no sense. How could such an intimate gesture ever be rude? Unless he was mistaken about the stranger regarding his as a friend.

He wasn’t though, the way the stranger looked at him, the way his eyes lit up each time he returned to the valley and Kemm came to greet him made that clear.

There were times when two of them were acutely aware of their differences, though the stranger had a far easier time seeing past them than Kemm did. Kemm still marveled at little things about the stranger, such as how horrifically crippled the stranger’s feet were. At first Kemm has assumed the stranger to have hooves, but then, by the river, he had pulled the heavy things off, revealing useless toes as he waded into the water to try and teach Kemm a new way of catching fish using a length of rope fine as spider web and a barbed thorn.

Kemm had been too taken aback by such obvious deformity to listen to what the stranger was saying, for the first time truly feeling sorry for him. No wonder he couldn’t climb, and why he hid his feet.

He’d asked about the injury, what creature had done such a thing to him and the stranger had laughed, stepping out of the water to show that his feet were fine, that he wasn’t missing half of them.

Sure enough his toes were all there, blunt and stunted, but the nails at the tips of his toes proved that was the entirety of them.

The stranger explained that it was normal where he came from, that the people kept their feet covered to protect them.

It was strange to imagine such a thing, but no more so than any of the stranger’s other stories, stories that Kemm loved to listen to.

There were stories in the stranger’s bland face, ones beyond the words he spoke, stories from elsewhere that would have been unbelievable if not for the light in the stranger’s eyes, the lilt of his voice.

Giant birds and giant fish and things that moved on the ground faster than a man could run and that ran without tiring, things that weren’t trees but stood taller than trees, clustered together like a jungle. Only a peaceful people would live so many so close together, but the stranger insisted that his were not a peaceful people. The thought that the stranger lived in such a place along with many of his kind was impossible when he could barely climb to the lowest branches of one of Kemm’s home trees without help, but he insisted that it was true.

Kemm believed the stories, even if he couldn’t understand much of it, because of the stranger’s conviction. No one could tell a lie so happily, marveling at his own stories, for Kemm felt the same way as he taught the stranger about the valley and the people who lived there.

Kemm asked if someday he might accompany the stranger to his own home, but the stranger responded in the negative.

It was too dangerous, though he couldn’t explain why, making Kemm wonder if the stranger was projecting his own fears. His answer to the question of what dangers lay outside the valley wasn’t an answer at all. He talked about how the valley was in a place too remote for his people to reach easily, that he’d traveled there because it was one of the few pristine areas of jungle, untouched.

Despite the rudeness of it Kemm had looked directly at him and laughed at the absurdity of such a statement. The valley was by no means untouched, smoke from cook fires rose throughout it, the banks of the river had been dug out in places to secure fish traps, paths around home trees were worn smooth and free of saplings, even the branches of the home trees themselves were marked by generations of use. The trees themselves were carefully maintained. The sturdiest home trees were tended to, fruit and nut bearing trees were encouraged to grow, while vines that might strangle them were pulled away. The valley was nothing like the wilderness outside of it, full of giants, predators and vast expanses of trees that were good for neither food nor shelter.

The stranger had tried to explain that he meant untouched by his people, as though that made any difference. If the valley was so remote why was there any concern that his people would suddenly want it just because they learned a different people lived there? And if the stranger’s people had so many wonderful things why would they care about the valley? In Kemm’s experience it was wanting something that always started fighting. One family decided that they had the rights to a stretch of river or a group of exceptionally productive fruit trees and they got enough other families to agree that they should all have more or different and then a fight broke out and, if the fight lasted long enough, it grew and pulled more and more families into it until the time of the Peace King was over and a War King arose.

And if the valley was so remote that its isolation protected it then how had the stranger ended up there in the first place?

The stranger had answered, with no small degree of pride, that he had come because of how remote the valley was, that he wanted to seek out the last truly uncharted places, fill in the few remaining blanks on the maps.

Which made him a scout of sorts, though one without purpose, and raised the question of why he returned to the valley when there was nothing new left in it for him to see. The maps he carried with him and had shown to Kemm were so vast that the valley was barely a line. Surely there were other places he could go to, other new things to seek out.

The stranger had smiled and flushed with color. Kemm watched it flow across his face, all the way to his ears, as he tried to look at him the right way, without meeting his eyes and being rude. Except he couldn’t, though by now Kemm understood.

For the stranger eye contact was a different thing, like a child seeing a flower or butterfly for the first time, or a young mother watching her child playing, you looked at things that were wonderful to you, not things you were concerned about being a danger to you.

There was fear certainly, and awe and amazement in the stranger’s eyes, when he looked at Kemm.

Kemm looked back, knowing that the stranger didn’t really understand how hard it was for him to go against every rule of what was proper. To the stranger looking into someone’s eyes meant something different and that was what Kemm wanted to say to him.

The stranger reached out, then hesitated. Touching and petting and grooming was the same to him as meeting one’s eyes was to Kemm, an act of rudeness near unforgivable. It was proof that their people were impossibly different, yet the two of them had learned, were still learning and delighted in every moment of it.

Kemm took the stranger’s hand in his own, guided it to his shoulder. The stranger’s short fingers, so skilled with making images with sticks and leaves, but so poorly suited for showing affection, wove clumsily through his fur, holding like a child would.

The stranger confessed that he was worried, that his own people would see Kemm as an animal rather than a man, an intelligent, caring, wonderful man. Kemm would have argued two of those three, though he had no issue with being called intelligent, but most of all the very foundation of the stranger’s concern was laughably blind.

It was as though he’d missed how Halu’s wives had regarded him with pity and fascination, acting as though he were a child when they were trying to teach him their language, the way Liri, despite her efforts, would at times speak about him as though he wasn’t there. Halu had his wives come to watch Kemm and the stranger, Liri’s task hadn’t been to simply advise Kemm, but to observe the stranger and Kemm’s interactions with him as though monitoring the travels of a potentially dangerous animal. Their initial responses to his gifts and the images he made had been surprise and delight that such a strange being was so intelligent, could do such things when he seemed so crude and malformed. Liri hadn’t been able to believe the stranger’s people capable of war, clinging to her fanciful notion of a Queendom of malformed children, bumbling through the world too clumsy to have the full range of emotions that a true person would, lacking all depth and complexity, forever needing a benevolent mother to keep them from harm.

Instead of saying all this Kemm nodded, people were people, wise and foolish, warlike and peaceful, endlessly varied and blind to all save what they knew.

Even if the man would likely forever be ‘the stranger’ as his real name was too clumsy a mouthful for Kemm to ever hope to say correctly, despite practicing when he was away so that he might one day call out to him and greet him by name when he returned, they had more in common than the man seemed to understand.

If he could bring himself to look directly into the stranger’s eyes and see the love there, if the stranger could, no matter how hesitantly, run his fingers though the fur of Kemm’s back, then that understanding between their people, no matter how different they seemed at first, was always possible.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you don't mind that I got carried away with worldbuilding - in your prompts you asked so many wonderful questions and I started wondering, imagining the world where such a meeting was possible as well as the misconceptions each side might have about the other.


End file.
